


In the Dry Leaves of the Heart

by erelis



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Murder, Post-Season/Series 03, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:14:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27053236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erelis/pseuds/erelis
Summary: Surviving the Great Red Dragon was just the start. Now Hannibal and Will have to deal with an FBI manhunt and an array of complications, all while trying to survive the most dangerous of challenges. Each other.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 11
Kudos: 27





	In the Dry Leaves of the Heart

The first three days were a disjointed, incoherent blur of sight and sound and pain, threaded through with an uncomfortable cocktail of bone-deep weariness and frantic alarm. He only knew it had been three days because he’d caught a glimpse of the date when he’d turned on the phone a few minutes earlier to check the time. It felt like it had been longer. A week, maybe. A month. _Five fucking years_.

He needed to get some sleep. Real sleep. The kind of restful, healing sleep he hadn’t gotten since the past had turned up uninvited in his driveway and dragged him—admittedly without much protest—back into a nightmare. He was running on less than fumes now and the periods of unconsciousness that had been masquerading as sleep hadn’t done anything for him except take the edge off his fever.

The alarm beeped again, annoyingly insistent. It was time for another dose of antibiotics. More painkillers probably wouldn’t hurt either, considering the ball of agony that was currently encompassing his entire body. He started to open his mouth to sigh, felt pain light up the side of his face, and blew the breath out through his nose instead. The longer he stalled, the longer it would take for him to be able to get back to sleep.

Laboriously levering himself upright with his good arm, Will had to wait for the dizziness, pain, and brief flare of nausea to recede to manageable levels. When it had, he shut off the alarm, got to his feet, and trudged out of the small bedroom into the large open area that comprised the home’s living room, kitchen, and dining room. For a moment, he stood there in the middle of the space, looking around blankly, trying to get his bearings. It was silent as a tomb, the furniture as unfamiliar as the stretch of tree-dotted hillside he could see through the window. He had no idea where he was, whose house this was, or what had happened to the owner, and when he tried to find the memories of before this morning, all he came up with was a confusing jumble of unhelpful images.

There was a spread of medicine bottles and a single glass tumbler on the kitchen island. Cheap laminate that mimicked granite. Out-dated appliances. Linoleum floor. Bland brown cabinets. It was obvious who _didn’t_ own the house.

In no real condition to figure it out, and knowing that there wasn’t much he could do about it anyway, Will retrieved the glass, filled it from the tap, and went to examine the medication. There was a torn-off piece of paper on the counter, held in place by one of the bottles and filled with handwriting so sloppy that it looked like a child had written it. A child, or an adult using his non-dominant hand. His own handwriting, he realized, with his left hand.

It was a list of dosages and intervals for each of the bottles. According to it, he was due for two different things. He spared a second to wonder about the wisdom of following instructions he couldn’t remember transcribing as he shook the pills out into his palm, then decided that it was probably safe since he wasn’t dead yet. Opening his mouth only as much as necessary, Will eased the pills in and swallowed them down with one quick gulp of water so cold that it made his cheek ache even more than it already did.

He looked at the paper again, picked three more pills from their bottles, checked the water level in the glass, and headed back to the bedroom. Hannibal hadn’t moved, neither the alarm nor Will’s struggle to get out of bed had roused him. Will paused in the doorway, staring at him with wary trepidation, until he saw the slight rise and fall of his chest. Only then did he continue forward, moving around to Hannibal’s side of the bed.

“Hey.” When that quiet greeting elicited no reaction whatsoever, Will tried again. “Wake up.”

Nothing. Will glanced down, marking the slow movement of Hannibal’s chest. It took counting four steady breaths before he felt suitably convinced that he wasn’t standing there in the presence of a corpse.

“Hannibal,” he said, a little louder and with more urgency.

Still nothing. Gritting his teeth as his shoulder sharply protested the movement, Will pressed the back of his right hand against Hannibal’s forehead. His skin was warm and dry, a little too warm for a normal temperature, but he wasn’t burning up.

Will let his hand drop back to his side. “Hannibal, I need you to wake up.”

Because if he didn’t, Will didn’t know what the hell he was going to do. He couldn’t call 911. He couldn’t load him into a vehicle and drive him to an urgent care facility or a doctor’s office. Hannibal was too recognizable after the media circus of his trial and incarceration, and even if that weren’t the case, doctors had to report gunshot wounds. There was nowhere to go and no one to help either of them.

As he was about to set everything down and try giving him a shake, Will saw Hannibal’s eyelids flutter. “Hey.” Relief momentarily overshadowed the pain it caused him to lift his arm to grip Hannibal’s shoulder. “You with me?”

Very slowly, Hannibal opened his eyes. They were dull, but after a few languid blinks, they focused on him enough that Will was reasonably certain that he saw him. “Yes.”

His voice was rough and scratchy. Dehydration, maybe. Or disuse. As far as Will’s hazy recollection could be trusted, they hadn’t exactly been speaking very much.

“You need to take more pills.”

Hannibal ignored the glass Will held out to him. “How are you?”

There was no sense in lying. “Not great. But—” Hannibal’s eyelids started to fall. “ _Hannibal._ ”

They opened again, faster this time. The corner of Hannibal’s lip curled in what might have been a faint wince. “Apologies.”

“Just—Here.” Releasing his shoulder, Will grabbed the hand lying across his abdomen and pressed the glass into it. “Drink a little of this.”

He eyed him for a moment, expression too blank to make a guess at what was going on inside his head, and then, finally, lifted the glass to his lips. Will didn’t know whose idea it had been to arrange a bunch of pillows under Hannibal’s back to keep him propped mid-way between sitting up and laying prone, but he was thankful one of them had had the wherewithal to do it. Otherwise, he would’ve had to help him sit up to drink and the way his shoulder was burning told him how bad an idea that would have been.

“Okay.” Will held his hand over Hannibal’s other one until he obligingly turned his palm up and dropped the pills into it. “Now take these.”

Had he been more lucid, Will had a feeling Hannibal would have had a mildly sarcastic comment to make about the way he was fussing over him. But he just put the pills in his mouth and swallowed them down with a slow sip of water.

“Do you need anything else? Bathroom?”

“No.” He’d barely moved and he looked exhausted.

Will collected the glass before he could drop it and set it down on the nightstand. Hannibal watched him, eyes a little glassy but tracking him nonetheless. Will stared back at him, so many things he wanted to say—and _not_ say—roiling within him that he was momentarily struck mute. Until, without his permission, a question slipped out. “Are you dying?”

Something flickered over Hannibal’s face, briefly tightening the corners of his mouth and eyes. Amusement? Irritation? It wasn’t clear and Will couldn’t get a read on him at all. “Is that hope, Will?”

His frown was so immediate and pronounced that it pulled at the wound on his cheek and made his face ache. “I need to know. If I can do something—”

Hannibal’s eyes closed. “No.”

“No you’re not dying or no there’s nothing I can do?”

“Both. Fever. Infection.” Hannibal took a deep breath, then slowly released it. “It will pass.”

“That disappointment, Hannibal?” It was a cheap shot, but Hannibal’s question still stung.

He opened his eyes and fixed them on Will’s, his face inscrutably blank. Seconds passed as they looked at each other, the weight of all they’d done so heavy that Will felt like he was suffocating underneath it. Maybe Hannibal did too. No, he _knew_ that he did. A memory surfaced in his mind: a notebook lying open in a chair, covered in mathematical equations far too advanced for him to parse. He’d ignored it at the time, too hurt and too fucking _tired_ to want to think about it, but Will had always known what it was. An apology delivered the only way Hannibal could.

Someone needed to bend here, before the stalemate got too entrenched for either of them to break it, and Will was just sick enough of all the bullshit to be the one to do it. “We need to talk. But we need to be alive and clear-headed to do it. So just—Work with me here, okay? I can’t—” His voice dipped, the admission too hard to voice above a whisper. “I can’t do this myself.”

Hannibal blinked, the movement too deliberate to be anything but silent agreement. “Sleep. And food. I will—”

“No. I’ll make it.” Will’s face was starting to hurt in earnest, but it needed to be said before Hannibal decided to be stubborn. “We’ll sleep for a few hours and then I’ll make something.” If there was anything. Wracking his memory for the contents of the cabinets or the fridge produced nothing.

“All right.”

More than his hazy mind or his inability to stay awake without a struggle, Hannibal’s simple agreement to let him do the cooking sent a jolt of unease through Will. He reached for the sheets. “I need to check your wound.”

Hannibal caught his wrist in a grip so loose that he could have broken it without trying. “Not now.”

“Hannibal—”

“I’m tired, Will. Please. Leave it.”

“You don’t need to be awake to—” And just like that, he realized that Hannibal thought he _did_ have to be awake. Will had tried to kill them on that cliff and even though he hadn’t tried to do it again—he didn’t think he’d tried again, he couldn’t remember doing anything even remotely threatening since emerging from the sea—Hannibal was still on guard. Wary. Uncertain.

It wasn’t the same as reading a crime scene and Will hadn’t been conscious or lucid for most of the immediate aftermath of that plunge, but it suddenly came to him in flashes, disordered and faintly nauseating. Hannibal slumped in the seat of a car, appearing to be asleep but hanging onto consciousness by his fingernails. Lying beside him on this bed, feigning sleep until he was certain that Will had gotten there first. Waking with him yet doing nothing to disrupt the illusion that he was still asleep.

“You need to sleep.” It came out harder than he intended. Angry. “You aren’t getting any better because you aren’t actually sleeping.”

His silence was all the confirmation that Will needed to know that he was right.

Spinning on his heel, Will stalked out of the bedroom and went back to the kitchen. He had no idea where anything was. His head was starting to swim in warning: if he soon didn’t take the initiative to lay down, his body was going to do it for him. But the bright surge of anger buoyed him long enough to yank open a few drawers, find a sharp knife, and storm back to the bed. Hannibal was still awake, a faint furrow above his brow the only hint to his thoughts on his otherwise blank face.

Will slapped the knife down on the mattress beside Hannibal’s hand. “Hang onto it if you think you’re going to need it. But sleep. Please.”

The look he got was pained, as if Hannibal felt slightly embarrassed for him. “Will.”

“I’m not—” Biting it off, he shook his head. “We’ll talk about it later.”

It wasn’t a conversation that he was looking forward to having, but it was a necessary one. They weren’t going to be able to move out of this frozen no man’s land until it was over and Will wasn’t willing to try to navigate it when his thoughts were a scattered, disordered mess and Hannibal could barely stay awake. It was too dangerous and there was only one chance to get it right. They weren’t going to get a do-over if they screwed it up.

Slowly licking his lips, Hannibal picked up the knife and set it down on the nightstand next to the glass. “This won’t be necessary. Come.” He folded his hands on his chest, far above his wound. “Lay down. You need sleep too.”

A real concession or feigned agreement? Will eyed him suspiciously, but he wasn’t feeling well enough to make more than a token gesture. Sighing, he went over to his side of the bed and gingerly sat on the edge, as much to avoid jarring his shoulder as to not jostle Hannibal. It took a few seconds to ease himself down fully and get comfortable. Once he was, he glanced over at Hannibal and found that he’d been watching him. Will met his half-lidded eyes and held them for a heavy, strangely poignant moment before Hannibal closed them entirely. He didn’t turn his face away.

With a burst of startling clarity, Will knew why. Wary though Hannibal was of his intentions now, he was making a demonstrable effort to concede to Will’s wishes. It wasn’t just a lowering of his guard. It was an offering of vulnerability when he felt least inclined to make it. The truth of that realization dug under Will’s skin and burrowed beneath his ribs, settling in as an aching bruise somewhere in the vicinity of his heart.

Unable to bring himself to discard the gift he’d been given, Will continued looking at him as his own eyes grew heavy, and because he was watching, he saw the moment when Hannibal fell asleep for real. All the tension seeped out of his face, the lines of pain and weariness at the corners of his mouth and eyes smoothing into nothing. His hair hung disheveled over his forehead, limp with sweat and salt from the sea that had yet to be rinsed off. It was so far from the pristine, controlled guise to which Will was accustomed that he almost didn’t look real.

Will’s fingers twitched with the irrational urge to reach over and touch him. To prove to himself that he wasn’t just a figment of his overactive, fevered imagination. Or a ghost his mind had conjured to cope with his loss the way that Abigail had been.

Flexing his fingers, Will shifted, turning his face toward the ceiling, and closed his eyes. They would be better when he next awoke or they wouldn’t be. There was nothing he could do about it except try to give his body the time it needed to heal.

In seconds, he was asleep.

* * *

The next day was a little easier.

Will’s body still felt like it had been stabbed a few times, thrown off a hundred foot cliff, and drowned, but his mind was clearer. The oppressive, dream-like haze had lifted from his thoughts and tiny bits and pieces of the painstaking flight away from that house were starting to come back to him. Not in any useful order, unfortunately, but knowing that he was capable of remembering any of it made him hopeful that as time passed, he would be able to remember more of it.

There was food in the kitchen. Nothing fancy, but Will couldn’t manage fancy on his best day and Hannibal wasn’t in any condition to cook. He looked like he might argue about that when Will brought in a plate of white toast slathered in peanut butter, but Will glared at him until he shut his mouth and reluctantly picked up a piece. The glass of orange juice and mug of cheap coffee that Will set on the nightstand next to him were accepted more graciously, with just a faint disapproving curl of his lip.

Getting a few hours of real sleep had done Hannibal a lot of good. He was more responsive and alert, his eyes sharper and more focused than they’d been yesterday, and his voice was stronger. Were it not for the careful way he moved and the conspicuous lack of argument over the meager breakfast, he might have seemed to be well on the road to recovery.

"Are you going to let me check your wound today?"

Hannibal’s expression was so mild it was nearly nonexistent. "Do you know what you’re looking for?"

"No, but I figure you’ll tell me." Will shrugged his uninjured shoulder. "And I can see your back. You can’t."

"Will you allow me to look over yours?"

"Quid pro quo?"

"If you like."

Will wasn’t sure if he liked or not. They’d tried that before and all it had brought them was pain. Refusing to get into a protracted conversation about it, or worse, an argument, he gestured impatiently at the sheets. "Whatever."

Slanting him an inscrutable look, Hannibal pushed them down and moved his right arm out of the way. The outside of the bandage was white. It was a positive sign, Will realized, as a dim memory swam out of the depths of his mind, briefly overlaying a blood-soaked mess atop the pristine present. He picked gently at the corner of the tape until it unadhered from Hannibal’s skin, then eased it back and took a look.

The area around the hole was red, but it wasn’t swollen and there was no puss leaking from the wound. He touched his finger to the undamaged skin at the edge of the redness. It was warm without being hot. Another good sign, in his decidedly non-medical opinion.

"No puss. No obvious inflammation. It doesn’t feel too hot." Glancing up, he met Hannibal’s eyes. "What do you think?"

Nudging Will’s fingers out of the way with his knuckles, Hannibal looked down and prodded at the wound for a few seconds. "Better than I hoped, all things considered."

"Should I clean it or do you think you can manage a shower?"

"A shower." Hannibal’s nose wrinkled slightly for just an instant. "Whether I can manage it or not."

In another life, Will might have felt abashed over whatever body odor was assailing Hannibal’s acute sense of smell. In this one, he just didn’t care. "Guess you’re missing that aftershave now, huh?"

His nose didn’t wrinkle this time. It scrunched up in visceral disgust. "Absolutely not."

It was so absurd that Will laughed, low and deep in his throat. "I’ll get you a bottle for Christmas."

The dark look Hannibal gave him suggested that he would be doing so at great risk to life and limb.

Relenting, Will jerked his head to the side. "Come on. Sit up so I can take a look at the back."

Planting his hands against the mattress, Hannibal levered himself up so slowly that Will caught himself about to reach over to help. After everything they’d been through and all the injuries they’d sustained, it was disconcerting to see him like this. Weak. _Mortal_. Hannibal had always seemed superhuman to Will, untouchable and implacable even when covered in his own blood, and now that guise had been discarded too.

He didn’t ask for help and something in Will warned him against offering it, leaving him with nothing to do but stand there and watch until Hannibal was upright and sitting on the edge of the mattress. For a second or two, it looked like he was breathing harder than normal, but it might have been a trick of the light. When he took a closer look, he saw no sign of labored breathing.

Will sat down beside him and made a circular motion with his hand. "Turn to the side."

Hannibal did as requested without a word. Will leaned forward, reaching for the bandage, and froze as his eyes caught on the nasty burn above it. _What?_ It took a second for his brain to make sense of the image and when it did, the unexpected surge of rage made his breath catch in his throat.

And of course, Hannibal heard the gasp. "Will?"

Hand shaking, Will lifted it a few inches higher and brushed his fingertip over the lower edge of the R, needing the tactile proof that it was really there and not a figment of his imagination. The flesh was unnaturally smooth, almost waxy, and the image was clear: the rearing boar, the crown, the garland of leaves, and every hateful letter of Mason’s last name. Either Hannibal hadn’t been shirtless any of the other times that Will had seen the entry wound or he’d been so out of it that he hadn’t registered what he was seeing.

He was registering it now.

"Will?" Hannibal’s voice was sharper now and he started to turn. "What’s wrong with it?"

"I didn’t know."

"What?" Hannibal tried to look at him, but Will caught him by the shoulder and pushed him back the way he’d been. "Will, what—"

"This." Will tapped his finger against the center of the boar.

Hannibal shook his head. " _This_ what?"

_He can’t feel it._ Will ran two fingers over the boar, from the top of its head down the length of its back and Hannibal had no reaction whatsoever. _The nerves are dead._

"He branded you."

The tension that had been spreading across Hannibal’s shoulders loosened. Will saw him slump slightly, the _oh_ implied in that gesture so clear that he was sure he’d actually heard it. "Yes."

"When?" Will asked tightly.

"After dinner." There was no trace of emotion in Hannibal’s voice. He might as well have been discussing the weather for all that it seemed to affect him. "According to Cordell, it was nearly on my face."

Will only became aware that his lips had pulled back in a snarl when his face started to hurt. "What else?"

"Hm?"

Through clenched teeth, Will ground out, "What else did he do to you?"

"It doesn’t matter. It was years ago. Mason Verger is dead."

" _Tell me._ "

With his fingers still resting against Hannibal’s back, Will felt his sigh as much as heard it. "Mason wanted me to have a pig’s experience of life before its slaughter. It was some uninspired abuse and a few hours bound in an uncomfortable position before Alana and Margot set me free to rescue you."

"I didn’t know."

"How could you? We never had the opportunity to speak of it."

Will snatched his fingers back, smarting under the bland, disinterested comment as if Hannibal had struck him. No, they hadn’t had the opportunity to speak of it. When he’d woken up, face still securely attached and unexpectedly safe in his own bed, Will hadn’t tried to talk to Hannibal about anything. He’d just manipulated him into surrendering himself to Jack.

_I was justified_ , he wanted to tell him. The need to say it out loud made his throat ache, but he kept his lips pressed firmly together, knowing the excuse would sound pathetic. _You tried to_ kill _me! I didn’t see any way forward from there!_

He must have been too quiet or else Hannibal knew that the subject was a touchy one even after all this time. "Will. It doesn’t matter."

But it did matter. It mattered that Mason had branded him with _his_ _name_ like an animal. Like a possession. _You’re mine._ The dark, possessive thought slithered through Will’s mind, leaving an oily trail of jealousy in its wake. _No one can mark you but me._ It was discomforting and grossly inappropriate. Will shoved it away, unwilling to deal with it.

"It doesn’t bother you?"

"I wasn’t in a position to avoid it at the time and cosmetic surgery is unfortunately not a perk of lifetime incarceration," Hannibal said blandly.

Which meant _yes_ , Will realized. It bothered him a great deal, but he couldn’t do anything about it and he wouldn’t give Alana or Chilton the satisfaction of asking for treatment to have it removed.

"You aren’t incarcerated anymore."

"I can hardly walk into a surgeon’s office and ask for treatment."

"Not here, no, but are we going to stay here?"

Hannibal didn’t immediately respond. Will stared at the back of his head for a few seconds, watching him not so much as twitch, before he nudged him in the back, far enough away from the brand for him to feel it. "Hannibal?"

"Where would you like to go?" Hannibal asked quietly.

"Didn’t think that far ahead. But we can’t stay here, right? Wherever here is."

"North Carolina. Not terribly far from the Virginia."

Already knowing the answer, Will asked, "This isn’t your house, is it?"

"No."

No elaboration was forthcoming. Will waited for it past the point where any reasonable person might have continued, then sighed heavily. "Fill me in. I don’t remember."

"You wouldn’t. You were unconscious when we arrived. There was only a man here. His body’s in the garage."

Curiously, Will felt nothing at that admission. He knew that he ought to feel _something_. Horror, disgust, disappointment, even sorrow for the lost life. But where once he would have had a visceral reaction, he just felt tired. "So we need to leave sooner than later."

"Yes, though it isn’t quite that urgent. I chose this house on purpose. The man who lived here was retired and solitary. He had no family and preferred to keep to himself. It will be some time before he’s missed."

A murky memory oozed to the surface of Will’s mind: Hannibal slumped in the driver’s seat, barely conscious, skin pale and sweaty with fever. "You drove us here, killed a man, and got us settled?"

Hannibal’s shoulder twitched in a shrug that was as dismissive as his voice. "You were in no condition to do it."

A series of clearer memories joined the first. The agonizing burn of a scalpel’s blade slicing into his face and the wild spike of fear as Cordell’s injection held him motionless, unable to get away. Waking in his bed, face intact but for a carefully stitched cut near his hairline, nearly a hundred miles from the Verger farm. In front of him, still vivid despite the passage of time, was the brand that had been fresh that long ago night.

His dawning comprehension was a bitter pill to swallow. Although he’d been hurt himself, Hannibal had not only gotten Will out of Muskrat Farm through however many goons Mason had employed, but he’d also gotten him safely home. And he’d done it again; wounded more deeply this time and yet he’d still put his pain aside to ensure that they were out of immediate danger.

Not knowing what to say to that, Will focused on the immediate concern. "How long do we have?"

"No more than a week. We have an appointment to keep."

"What?" That was news to Will.

"We’re meeting Chiyoh at a marina just south of Savannah."

There were too many questions he wanted to ask. All of them hit him at once, lodging in his throat in such a tangled knot that only one strangled word slipped out of his mouth. "When?"

Evidently Hannibal didn’t need him to clarify what he was asking. Without hesitation, he offered mildly, "I contacted her before we left my house."

That didn’t clear up as much as Will wished it did. How had Hannibal known how to reach Chiyoh? Had they been in contact somehow while he’d been incarcerated? If they were headed to a marina, that had to mean a boat was involved. Where were they going? Was Chiyoh going with them? Did Hannibal even know how to operate a boat? What kind of boat was it? Will knew how to operate a variety of boats, but with his shoulder fucked up, he was in no condition to perform physical labor. If it was a sailboat, they were up the proverbial shit creek.

And this house. Hannibal said it wasn’t far from Virginia, suggesting that it probably wasn’t very far from his cliff house either. Which meant, what? That he’d scoped out the area years before his incarceration on the off-chance he’d have to hide in someone else’s house? _Or maybe Chiyoh did it while he was imprisoned._ But there was no way he could have known about the fake escape plan well enough in advance to contact her and ask her to check into it, much less have known how the whole debacle would play out.

Unfortunately for his curiosity, Hannibal wasn’t volunteering anything else. He never did. Will had always wondered if he got off on being mysterious or if he was so unaccustomed to sharing the inner workings of his mind with someone else that it simply didn’t occur to him that his "answers" often weren’t terribly illuminating. Or maybe it did and he just didn’t care.

Tempting as it was to demand more information, Will didn’t have it in him to argue. Talking was still too uncomfortable to do more than he had to, and for all that Hannibal hid the strain of sitting upright, he knew that it was costing him. _Ask him about it later and don’t_ _accept any_ _smug evasion. If there is a later._

Will’s gaze tracked sideways, through the open bedroom door out into the living room. "I’ll check the TV while you’re in the shower. See if there’s anything about us on the news. Might give us an idea of how soon we need to move."

The alternative, that Jack knew they would be watching the news and was therefore keeping as much of the manhunt quiet as possible, did not bear thinking about at the moment. Too many _what ifs_ would render them too paranoid to make a decision and they didn’t have the luxury of indecisiveness.

Hannibal made a sound of assent. "How does the wound look?"

Focusing on the task at hand, Will eased the bandage off his back and examined it. Much like the exit wound, it was red around the edges and subtly warm to the touch. No puss. No red marks of infection radiating out from it. "Like the other side. It’s a little warm, but..." Trailing off, he touched the back of his hand to the unblemished side of Hannibal’s back. "I don’t know. It might just be because you were lying on it."

"All right."

This time, when Hannibal made an effort to rise, Will stood up and offered him his usable arm. Hannibal took it without hesitation, grasping his forearm and using it to pull himself to his feet. Tension gathered at the corners of his mouth and was quickly smoothed away, but Will was watching him too intently to miss it. He kept hold of him after he was standing, recognizing how unsteady he was by his half-lidded eyes and his blank expression. Will didn’t hurry him, content to stay silent and still at his side until he was certain of his balance. Eventually, Hannibal came back from wherever he’d gone and his hand dropped away. Will followed him the short distance to the bathroom and stopped in the doorway, watching as he continued in by himself.

Hannibal was walking all right, albeit more slowly and a lot stiffer than usual, and his posture was relatively straight. But he had his right hand pressed to his abdomen and Will could read too much tension in the way the muscles flexed across his shoulder blades.

"You going to be all right in here on your own?"

"Yes."

For a moment, Will debated the benefits of pressing him. If he slipped or lost consciousness in there and ripped open the wound worse than it was, they were even closer to fucked than they already were. But it wasn’t like Will was in any shape to do much more than get in the way. His right arm’s range of movement was severely limited and if he moved too quickly, his wounds throbbed so violently that it made him dizzy and nauseous.

"Yell if you need me," he said instead, turning away and leaving Hannibal to it.

* * *

Will spent the next forty-five minutes sitting in an old armchair, flicking through channel after channel, combing through local, national, and a handful of worldwide broadcasts for news. He found a few segments about the Tooth Fairy, local anchors summing up Dolarhyde’s history and reassuring the public that he was now dead and no longer a threat, and one interview with Jack attesting to the veracity of claims that Dolarhyde was dead and reiterating that there was no new information about Hannibal Lecter.

In the background, he could hear the dim rush of water spraying from the showerhead. No other sounds emanated from the bathroom. Will remained alert, listening for anything that might have suggested Hannibal was struggling, but he heard nothing. It was taking a long time, though, and he was just resolving to go check on him at the hour mark, Hannibal’s pride be damned, when he heard the shower shut off.

He flipped to a different channel, absently reading the ticker scrolling across the bottom of the screen while the reporter discussed the traffic in Elizabeth City. Sports statistics, the weather, the Tooth Fairy was dead, the FBI was still searching for Hannibal Lecter’s body or information on his whereabouts. The bathroom door opened with a soft click.

The news had paused for commercials by the time Will felt Hannibal’s presence beside him. He glanced up. Water still glistened on Hannibal’s skin and his hand was pressed to his wound again. One of the towels was wrapped loosely around his hips and there was a pale cast to his skin that hadn’t been there prior to the shower. His hair, plastered to his head, was still dripping. Will watched a drop slide down the side of his neck, pool briefly at his collarbone, and then slowly slip over the edge and down the front of his chest.

"Anything?"

Will jerked his eyes up to see Hannibal looking at the television. "They found your house. Everybody knows Dolarhyde’s dead. Nobody knows what happened to us. They got the video from his camera, so they know we were injured. But that’s all."

Hannibal hummed thoughtfully. "So the manhunt continues."

"Until they find us or our bodies, according to Jack."

"Jack Crawford doing interviews," Hannibal murmured thoughtfully. "A message?"

"Maybe. I don’t know. I only caught the tail end of it."

But it wouldn’t surprise him. If not a message to Hannibal, then one to him. Though what it might have been, Will wasn’t sure. A threat? A warning that the FBI was aware that he was in on it? Reassurance that they were looking for him and meant to rescue him? Years ago, it might have been the latter, but Jack had to know by now that Will couldn’t resist forever the pull Hannibal exerted on him.

He gently shook his head, as much to clear the thoughts away as to emphasize his point. "No, he has to know we’re alive. By now he’ll have people watching the borders and the airports."

_Which you already anticipated_ . _That’s why we’re going to a marina._ Because it would be a hell of a lot easier to alert officials at airports and border crossings that they might try to flee the country than it would be to monitor every single marina that lined the coast. E ven if Jack had thought of that possibility , there wasn’t anything he could actually _do_ about it. He simply didn’t have the manpower.

"We should leave as soon as possible," Will decided. "I don’t want to still be here when Jack realizes that we didn’t make a wild run for Canada."

"Will you be able to drive?"

He lifted his left shoulder in a lopsided shrug. “Needs must.”

Hannibal made a low sound, but Will didn’t waste energy trying to translate it. Whether he agreed or not was irrelevant. They had to go before Jack doubled back and swept more thoroughly through the area around the cliff house.

“Come.” The word was barely out of his mouth and Hannibal was already turning toward the bedroom. “I need to check your wounds.”

_Damn._ He’d been hoping he’d forgotten about that. Blowing a sigh out through his nose, Will heaved himself up one-handed and followed. Hannibal moved slowly, his hand on his abdomen, but he didn’t ask for help and he was steady on his feet. In Will’s wholly useless estimation, that seemed like an improvement.

In the bedroom, Hannibal beckoned him to the window with a tip of his head. The light streaming in was bright and clear, the sky beyond the glass a deep, cloudless blue. Joining him, Will dutifully stood unmoving as Hannibal examined the side of his face, suppressing a wince as a fingertip lightly prodded the skin along the edge of the stitches.

“Swelling’s down. The antibiotics are working. How much pain are you experiencing?”

“Depends. It’s worse when I’m drinking. Tolerable when I’m not doing anything.”

Tolerable, because Will had survived worse injuries and lived with more excruciating pain for significantly longer. There was nothing in his voice when he said it and he was keeping his face still and expressionless for the examination, but the way Hannibal looked at him suggested that he knew exactly what he meant.

“There will be scarring but proper care will minimize it.”

_What’s another scar?_ He had so many of them, another wouldn’t make much of a difference. It wasn’t like he was going to be entering any beauty contests. “When did you put the stitches in?”

He’d seen them in the mirror yesterday when he’d dragged himself to the bathroom. They were neat and expertly done, but he couldn’t recall when he’d gotten them. That Hannibal had done the work was undeniable. Going to anyone else was too great a risk for an injury that wasn’t life-threatening and if they weren’t going to seek assistance for a bullet to the gut, they sure as hell weren’t going to bother for a stab to the face.

"The day we arrived." Hannibal’s gaze slid down to Will’s shoulder. "Can you remove your shirt?"

Giving him a flat look, Will unbuttoned it and performed a graceless maneuver to shrug it off his left shoulder while simultaneously easing the fabric one-handed down over the injured one. Hannibal waited until the shirt was out of the way, then examined both the wound itself—also stitched, Will noticed as he glanced down at himself—and his back.

"How’s the pain here?"

"Tolerable," Will remarked dryly. "Not the first time I’ve been stabbed in the shoulder."

Hannibal’s non-expression didn’t change. "Shower only. No baths until the stitches come out."

"That a subtle hint?"

"Hardly subtle."

Rolling his eyes, Will stepped away from him and headed for the door.

* * *

A shower and a change of clothes left Will feeling more human than he had in days. He hadn’t asked where the suitcase full of clothing his size had come from or why Hannibal had it in the first place. Because there was a second suitcase beside it filled with clothes that weren’t for him. Clothes that, if they were anything like the shirt and pants Hannibal was wearing now, were slightly too loose but had probably fit perfectly before years of imprisonment had taken a toll on his body. If he thought about it, Will knew exactly why those suitcases existed and life was easier if he didn’t think about it.

Hannibal had gotten dressed on his own while Will had been in the shower. Currently, he was reclining on the couch in dark grey pants and a partially buttoned black shirt, watching a news program on the TV. Were it not for the pallor of his skin, the absence of socks, and the unstyled disarray of his hair, it might have almost been possible to believe he was lounging there because he wanted to be.

From his vantage behind the kitchen island where he was putting together another uninspiring meal to accompany a round of medication, Will watched him. He wasn’t bothering to be subtle about it. Hannibal was either too unwell to divide his attention between the news and his surroundings or he wasn’t; regardless, even the most carefully surreptitious glance would be a wasted effort.

The earlier activity had clearly exhausted him. He hadn’t moved since installing himself on the couch and the color of his clothes made him look ghoulishly pale. When he lifted the remote to change the channel, Will’s eagle-eyed attention caught the way his hand shook. Not sure if that was a consequence of overdoing it, low blood sugar, or something worse, Will decided to err on the side of caution and swapped the milk he’d just taken out of the fridge for the half-empty bottle of orange juice. It probably wouldn’t pair all that well with the canned tomato soup he’d heated up, but Will didn’t care. Keeping Hannibal alive and on the road to recovery was more important than pandering to his oh-so-sensitive palate.

He made two trips to the couch. The first to hand over the pills and the orange juice, which Hannibal took without a word or a change of expression. The second with the bowl of soup didn’t fare quite as well.

"Just eat it," Will said, holding it out as Hannibal flicked a narrow-eyed glance his way.

Even sick and severely injured, Hannibal managed to convey an undeniable sense of offended dignity as he took the bowl. But he ate the soup and drank the juice without vocal complaint, then went back to perusing the news. Will ate his own meal quietly, though unlike Hannibal, his silence was due to painstakingly maneuvering the spoonfuls of soup into his mouth without unduly aggravating his face. Despite his best effort, however, his face was throbbing by the time he was done and he was in desperate need of a nap.

Instead of retreating to the bedroom, Will dragged himself through cleaning up the dishes before returning to the living room and settling into the recliner by the couch. Leaning his head back against the cushion proved to be a mistake. His eyelids, already heavy, seemed to immediately turn into lead weights. In an effort to resist gravity’s pull, Will rolled his head sideways to look at Hannibal, who still appeared to be absorbed in whatever analysis he was doing of the media’s coverage of their disappearance.

"Thoughts?"

Hannibal was silent for so long that Will started to wonder if he’d heard him. Just as he was about to ask again, he finally answered him. "You’re right. We should leave as soon as possible."

A sliver of wary uneasiness shot down Will’s spine, momentarily sidelining his weariness. "What is it?"

As familiar as he was with Jack’s methods and way of thinking, Will knew that he wasn’t nearly as clever as Hannibal. He also didn’t have his experience in shedding old lives for new ones. If anything Jack or one of the FBI spokespeople said to the press gave even a little away about their strategy, he knew Hannibal would pick up on it.

“Nothing so easily defined,” Hannibal said quietly. “I don’t believe Jack is using the media to set a trap, but I imagine it will only be a matter of time before his mind turns in that direction. Best be on our way while it’s still reasonable to trust what we’re hearing.”

_And the window for that is closing fast_ . Having his earlier suspicions validated did nothing to ease the restless anxiety threading through his body. Leaving _right now_ was out of the question, no matter how much he might have wanted to go. They both needed at least another night’s rest in a relatively safe location. But tomorrow?

Will took silent stock of his body. His mind was clear. Or clear enough, anyway. He could think without feeling like every thought required herculean effort to form and maintain. His various aches were tolerable. The pain in his face might prohibit excessive talking and made eating and drinking a chore, but it wouldn’t get in the way of driving. The main problem was his arm, but if they stuck to the highways instead of twisty backroads, he thought he could manage.

Hannibal had said they were in North Carolina, near the Virginia line, and they were heading to a marina somewhere on the Georgia coast south of Savannah. That meant at least eight hours in the car. More likely closer to nine or ten, depending on traffic. Unless there was a reason to avoid it, they could take 95 South for the majority of it. Getting _to_ 95 from their current location, wherever the hell that was, and getting _from_ it to their destination would probably be the trickiest part, but Will had survived being gutted and the grueling aftermath. He could survive steering a car for a few hours. _Worse comes to worst, I pull over and take a break._

The big problem was Hannibal. The seat could be reclined to take some of the pressure off his abdomen and Will could try to drive as smoothly as possible, but it was still going to be an unpleasantly bumpy ride. There wasn’t anything he could do about that. _He’d p_ _robably rather be uncomfortable than behind bars again, though._

Glancing over to the couch, Will found Hannibal already looking at him. Their eyes met and for a moment, neither one of them said anything. Then, as the silence grew too heavy to bear, Will cleared his throat. “How about tomorrow? I drive. You navigate.”

That Hannibal didn’t immediately agree spoke volumes. “You’re certain?”

“You did all right getting us here.”

And if Hannibal could get them from his cliffside house to this place, kill a man, and neatly stitch up Will’s wounds after getting shot in the gut, beaten up, falling off a cliff, and half drowning in the sea, Will could drive them a few hundred miles with a bum shoulder.

Maybe Hannibal thought so too, because after another, albeit brief, pause, he nodded. “Very well.”

Now that they had a plan, Will’s first instinct was to get on the road as soon as possible. Wake up early, get something to eat, and leave before the sun came up. Capitalize on an hour or so of darkness and relatively empty roads. But that would also put them right in the middle of rush hour multiple times. Whereas if they left in the late afternoon or early evening, they would have time to rest before their departure, they’d likely avoid traffic entirely, and it would be dark for the majority of the trip.

But would traveling at night be better or worse than traveling during the day?

Will wished he was in better shape to think about this than he was. After surviving everything that had happened to him over the last five years, the last thing he wanted to do was make a boneheaded mistake because he was too tired, too out of it, or too paranoid to think straight. He tried to lay it out point by point in his mind.

Physically, it would be easier to drive during the day. Unless it ended up being miserably rainy, visibility would be better and better visibility would help him avoid situations that might require more use of his right arm than it was capable of handling. But better visibility for him meant better visibility for everybody else. Traffic jams, traffic lights, stop signs, roads with more than one lane, rearview mirrors—all convenient opportunities for someone to get a glimpse of _Hannibal the Cannibal_ sitting in the passenger seat.

At night, no one would be able to see inside the car and the roads would be pretty empty. Visibility would be shit and there was a higher risk of nocturnal animals running out into the middle of the road, but a little discomfort from overusing his arm would be a hell of a lot more preferable to having another stay at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. _Or somewhere worse, knowing my luck._

He mulled it over in silence for a few minutes, stubbornly—and pointlessly—attempting to avoid getting a second opinion. Eventually, he was forced to bow to the inevitable. “Think it’d be better to leave tomorrow night?”

Hannibal tipped his head sideways a fraction of an inch. “Fewer eyes would see us in the darkness.”

_A simple yes would have sufficed._ But there was his answer. He knew it would be wiser to travel at night and Hannibal agreed with him. “Tomorrow night, then.”

Provided, of course, that neither of them got worse during the night. Or died.

**Author's Note:**

> For contact links and info about current projects, please visit my [carrd](https://griffonfarm.carrd.co)!


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